How to Become a Foster Family (Step By Step)

I am excited to announce that our home study was approve by the state and that we are officially a licensed foster family!

In honor of finally becoming a legally recognized foster home, I'd like to share what the process looks like. The process will vary greatly from state to state, county to county, and even agency to agency, so your experience may be completely different. But I hope that by sharing the step by step process, I can give you a glimpse into what becoming a foster family looks like. I will also include dates so you can get an idea of the length of time that licensure can take.

1) Contact an agency
July 26, 2018
It all starts with a phone call or email. I was given an email address from a friend to contact a worker at the agency who recruits and leads orientation for prospective foster parents. After a few emails back and forth, we set a date for a personal orientation in our home.

2) Attend Orientation
August 16, 2018
The worker came to our home. She gave an overview of the agency, foster care, and answered any questions that we had. She did not pressure us at all! She was very careful in use language such as "if you were to become foster parents" or "if you would decide to go with our agency." Half way through orientation I actually stopped her and said that I appreciated how low pressure she was, but that we were positive that God was calling us to become foster parents and to go forward with their agency. At the end of the meeting, we received a pile of paperwork and a feeling of confidence that this was the agency that we were meant to work with. We confirmed that we wanted to move forward with the process.

3) Training
August 23, 2018-October 6, 2018
Every state requires foster parents to complete training hours before they are licensed, and to continue to attend trainings while they are licensed. In our county, we are required to complete the Presley Ridge curriculum. This included 12 units, each taking about 2.5-3 hours. We had to attend each of these trainings in person. So for about a month and a half, one to two days a week we had to go to the agency for training. It was a lot of information packed into a fairly short amount of time. We learned regulations, how to parent children who have experiences trauma, what is required of us, and got to hear some current foster parents share their experiences.

4) Paperwork 
August-November 2018 
Becoming foster parents involved piles of paperwork to be completed. We had to have our fingerprints scanned, backgrounds checked, financial statements and all of our bills copied, proof of dog vaccines, insurances copied, medical forms signed off by our doctors, lists of our prescriptions, etc. It was overwhelming to look at the long list of required documents, but our licensing worker helped us every step of the way to make it more manageable.

5) Egress Window
October, 2018
This is not a step that every family will need to take, but it was an unexpected and costly requirement for us. Due to use having a finished basement, if we planned on using it as any kind of living space more than storage or laundry, we needed to install an egress window. Even though we do not have anyone sleeping in the basement, our state requires this.

6) Home Visit and Interview
November 13, 2018
Our licenser came to our home to inspect it and interview us. She had to take photos, verify we had smoke detectors, a carbon monoxide detector, tap water that wasn't too hot, beds/cribs, medicine locked away, cleaning supplies out of reach of children, and overall assess that our home was safe. She also interviewed Brad and I about our marriage, childhoods, family, religion, parenting styles, and everything else in between. She had to get as much information as possible so that she can complete a written home study all about our family. At the end of our visit, she confirmed that she would be recommending us to the state to become licensed.

7) Home Study Sent to the State
November 27, 2018
After our licenser wrote our home study and received all paperwork, she sent her packet on us to the state. This was a little delayed due to an issue with our clearances (we recently moved to a new state, so our they had to be rerun and a new hard copy had to be sent to the agency before our packet could be sent to the state. It was tedious and I was getting impatient, but I tried to remind myself that God's timing is perfect and will set us up to receive the placement that he has meant for us.

8) Approval
December 17, 2018
We received notice that we are an officially licensed foster family! The state approved us, and as of now, we could get a placement at any moment.

Becoming a foster family is a lengthy and involved process (as it should be). I can't say that it was without tears, stress, or financial strain. But I can say that I felt God's hand moving us through each and every step. And now, we sit and wait to see what He has in store for the next piece of our journey.

If you have any questions about foster care, becoming foster parents, or how to help anyone involved in the system, please don't hesitate to reach out!

Love and Blessings,

Annmarie

Why We Are Becoming a Foster Family

As many of you already know, we are expecting! Except that it may be an infant, a one year old, or a toddler. We also have no idea where they will be born, what their name is, how long they will be with us, or who their father is.

That's right, we are becoming foster parents.

This journey has been a long time coming. I have wanted to adopt for as long as I can remember. As I became more aware of the foster care system, through my schooling and work as a CPS investigator, Brad and I decided that we would become foster parents at some point in the future. This was early in on our marriage, well before we knew we would have fertility problems. At that time, we planned on having a few biological children first, and then to become foster parents and adopt our last child.

God sure had other plans.

We had difficulty conceiving Elijah. It required medications, injections, treatment, and monitoring for many cycles for us to conceive our miracle. We are so blessed that God gave us the honor of being parents to this incredible little boy.

Brad and I enjoy being parents so much. As Elijah grew from an infant into a toddler, we started discussing when and how we should grow our family next. The odds of us conceiving naturally are extremely low. So our conversations turned to whether we should start treatments again, or if we should look into becoming a foster family.

These were some tough discussions. The hardest part was that they were both options that we were comfortable with and wanted to do. Fostering was never an "if we should do it" thing, but a "when should we do it" thing. And we had already gone through fertility treatments. While they were painful, expensive, and emotionally draining, they were so worth it to have Elijah as our son.

When we in the stage of having our discussions and gathering information, I contacted a friend of mine. She lives local to us and has fostered and adopted children. I had asked which agency she used, and she highly recommended a local agency that I was not familiar with.

The next day, I was driving up the highway. I was praying to God, asking him to lead us to which decision he had planned for us. I asked him whether he was calling us to foster, or to pursue fertility treatments. As I was praying that, an electronic billboard flashed an advertisement. It was for the foster care agency that my friend had just told me about the day prior, and it said "We need foster parents"! If that isn't God giving us an answer, then I don't know what is!

After discussing this with Brad, he agreed that it was a sign from God that He wants us to become foster parents, and that He wants us to start the process now. We want to be the safe and caring home for a child, no matter how long they are with us. We want to love on them and show them God's unconditional love. We want to pray for and support their biological family in their goal of reunifying. And if that in unable to happen, we would love to adopt them.

We know this won't be easy. We are putting our family out there financially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Our plan is to love on any kid with us as hard as we can, even if it's only for a season.

James 1:27 says that "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." This call looks different to different people. For our family, we feel so convicted that God is calling us to look after "orphans in their distress" through becoming foster parents.

It's a scary ride we are about to embark on, but also one of the most exciting journeys of our lives.

Please feel free to ask ANY questions about foster care, becoming foster parents, supporting foster families, etc! We are so excited to share this journey in hopes to show others what foster care really looks like in the day to day, and want to be as transparent as possible.

Thanks for all of the love, prayers, and support that we have already received. We couldn't have done this without the encouragement and help of our friends and family.

Love and Blessings,

Annmarie